Office 365 ProPlus is similar to other versions of Office that you can deploy to your users. Here are some important similarities:

Office 365 ProPlus is a full version of Office. The programs have the same features and functionality as other versions of Office. For example, Word in Office 365 ProPlus works the same way it does in Office Standard 2013.

Like other versions of Office, Office 365 ProPlus is available in a 32-bit and a 64-bit version. We recommend you deploy the 32-bit version, even on computers using 64-bit operating systems. If you think you need the 64-bit version, carefully review the information about 64-bit editions of Office 2013 before you deploy.

When you deploy Office 365 ProPlus, it's installed on the user's local computer. Office 365 ProPlus is not a web-based version of Office. It runs locally on the user's computer. Users don't need to be connected to the Internet all the time to use it.

Office 365 ProPlus is offered as a monthly subscription. If you cancel your subscription, Office 365 ProPlus goes into reduced functionality mode. In reduced functionality mode, users can open and view existing Office files, but users can’t use most of the other features of Office 365 ProPlus. For more information, see Overview of licensing and activation in Office 365 ProPlus.

To use Office 365 ProPlus, a user must have an Office 365 account and have been assigned a license. If you, as the Office 365 administrator for your organization, remove a user’s license or account, the user’s installations of Office 365 ProPlus go into reduced functionality mode.

Even though users don’t need to be connected to the Internet all the time to use Office 365 ProPlus, users must connect to the Internet at least once every 30 days. This is so that the status of their Office 365 subscriptions can be checked. If users don’t connect within 30 days, Office 365 ProPlus goes into reduced functionality mode. After users connect to the Internet and their subscription status is verified, all the features of Office 365 ProPlus are available again.

Users can install Office 365 ProPlus on up to five different computers with a single Office 365 license. For example, a user can have Office 365 ProPlus installed on a computer in the office, on a laptop to use when traveling, and on a home computer.

Office 365 ProPlus uses a technology called Click-to-Run to install Office. It provides a faster installation, so users can be up and running Office 365 ProPlus in a matter of minutes.

Office 365 provides a web-based portal where users can install Office 365 ProPlus themselves. Keep in mind that users have to be local administrators on their computers to install Office 365 ProPlus. If users aren’t local administrators, you'll have to install Office 365 ProPlus for them. Also, if you don’t want your users to install from the portal, you can prevent that. For more information, see Determine the deployment method to use for Office 365 ProPlus.

Because Office 365 ProPlus uses a different installation technology, there's a different way to apply software updates, such as security fixes. By default, Click-to-Run is configured to automatically install updates from the Office 365 service. But, you can configure Click-to-Run to install updates from a location within your own network. Or, you can use your existing software distribution tools to distribute updated builds of Office 365 ProPlus.

By default, Office 365 ProPlus installs as one package. This means that all Office programs are installed on the user’s computer. But, you can configure the deployment to exclude certain programs from being installed, such as Access or InfoPath.

You can use Office 365 ProPlus with supported versions of Exchange Server or SharePoint Server that are installed on-premises in your organization. Or, if they're part of your Office 365 plan, you can use Office 365 ProPlus with Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

Users can store the files they create with Office 365 ProPlus on their local computers or elsewhere on your network, such as a SharePoint site. Office 365 provides cloud-based file storage options, but you don’t have to use them. In fact, you can use Group Policy to prevent users from saving to those cloud-based locations.

The Office programs that come with Office 365 ProPlus are the same programs that come with Office Professional Plus 2013.

Office 365 ProPlus is not the same as Office Online. Office Online lets users open Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote documents in a web browser. Office Online is included with all Office 365 plans.